Server setup Part-3: Cockpit Setup with SSL Certificates

Cockpit is a very powerful server admin tool. It allows you to monitor server vitals including basic info like CPU, I/O, Memory, etc. You can also see server logs and it even comes with a web-based terminal.

Since it’s powerful, we don’t want it to be open to the world to see. So we will update ufw accordingly.

Before we start, you should find out what your public IP address is. Simply do a google search on “what’s my ip” will give you the answer.

Install cockpit:

sudo apt install cockpit -y

It’s now running and listening to port 9090

Update ufw to allow port 9090 from your IP address

sudo ufw allow from [your ip address] to any port 9090

You can add additional rules to allow for more IP addresses.

Now you can try going to https://[server IP address]:9090

If it works, login with your username and password.

The following section talks about how to setup your SSL certificate for cockpit.

Cockpit automatically setup a self-signed certificate for SSL. However, if your server is connecting to a DNS name, you may want to use the real SSL so you can connect to it using your…